Al-Shababi insurgents

The Shabab militant group suspected of planting last night’s bombs in a Ugandan soccer crowd was only last month foiled in a similar attempt in neighbouring Ethiopia. The attacks are both thought to have originated from Eritrea, where Al-Shabab operatives are routinely trained by the Eritrean government.

The Eritreans have been accused of arming and financing the Al-Shabab Islamist militants for some time now – variously by the Somalis, the AU, the UN,, US, Ethiopians and Ugandans. As per normal, any such links have been strenuously denied as ‘pernicious Zionist propaganda’ by Hamas. Al Q’eada, with whom Shabab has fairly close links, welcomed its newest recruits last February, following an Al-Shabab statement proclaiming that ‘the jihad of Horn of Africa must be combined with the international jihad led by the al-Qaeda network’. Let joy be unconfined.

In 2009, Islamist officials of the Somalian-based Hizbul Islam sharply denounced the arms embargo which the United Nations had imposed on the Eritrean government. Sheik Mohamed Mo’alin Ali, the information secretary of Hizbul Islam organization, declared in Mogadishu that:

‘the step that was imposed on Eritrea was not right one…we condemn the decision of the United Nation’s Security Council who accuse Eritrea for supporting and taking part in conflicts in Somali and the Horn of Africa’.

They may by now be regretting that communique.